General CONS:
-From a long term business perspective Bloomberg has zero chance of growth; the market is saturated and begging for innovation, and customers usually do NOT like dealing or working with Bloomberg - most of the time they simply have no other option
-Employees are no longer valued assets, they are soldiers and rarely get recognition or praise from management. You are expected to do your job, not take risks, be quiet and make sure the "Bloomberg cruise ship doesn't sink"
-The Bloomberg culture from the top down is hurting. Not a company for people excited to grow a career, most employees who enjoy the salary and stability will fall in line and try to "not get fired".
-What you'll find here is the definition of people leaving or being unhappy because of the manager, not necessarily the company. All of the pros listed above can prove worthless if you have a sub-par manager and within a negative environment.
-The HR group within the company are robots and care little about employees below senior management. There are DOZENS of stories about employees who have been wronged, treated unfairly and with disrespect - but HR's job is to make sure complaints are squashed and it doesn't make it up to Mike B. Usually employee complaints are washed through the HR spin machine until the employee loses hope and either gives up, leaves or is shown the door.
-The working environment is very negative, but upper management is shielded from this or just doesn't want to know. As of a month ago most employees either understand this and are accepting of it, or are extremely unhappy in their day to day.
-Bloomberg's first attempt at collaboration and enterprise technology has been a challenge, for both sales, product and engineering. They don't get it.
-The sales organization overall does not understand enterprise sales, most managers would fail in a modern technology company.
-It is a very flat company, there is no determined career path and most employees are all but convinced to be silent contributors. You are all but told to not rock the boat.
-The culture is of extreme micro-management; all office entry/exit time-stamps are exposed internally, most managers expect you to take lunch less than 30 minutes and you usually have to be in at 8 and leave after 6.
-Don't expect company sponsored events other than the summer picnic, most happy hours and events are looked down upon by managers.
CONS for Product Management and Engineering:
-Upper Management actually dissuades innovation, they think Bloomberg is fine the way it is, don't take risks
-If you care about customer (end user) experience, creative flexibility, and technology/tools developed after 2012 then Bloomberg is NOT for you.
-Most Product Managers are experts in the workflow of the user, not product or technology subject matter experts
-Engineering talent is respected and of high quality, but over the last few years the top talent are all being lost to more innovative tech companies: Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Spotify, etc
- Several gaps and bugs pop up daily, and deploying or rolling out new features and functionality sometimes take weeks or months - not a great culture for innovative engineers - you'll want to go to one of the other big tech companies for that.
-If you want to actually build interesting products, adapt to customer needs and create great user experiences, then look elsewhere
-There are more good product managers and engineers leaving rather than joining, a sign that the company and product is past it's prime
-Bloomberg as a whole does not understand compliance technology, especially for non-Bloomberg data sets. Customers are learning to look elsewhere.
My overall message is to simply understand what you are getting yourself into by joining the company. You'll make a good salary and meet some fun people, but if you care about advancing your career and being part of an innovative technology organization, then look elsewhere. Some people are totally fine with the status quo and collecting paychecks. But for those who care about careers and crave passion, if you look into their eyes you'll see souls dying.
**Make sure you talk to current employees in the group you are joining before accepting**
